Bad, bad, very bad

So…I was driving around in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, I had dropped Jeremy and Cheryl at the SF airport and then gone on into the city to have fun looking around for a couple of hours until it was time for me to go back to the airport. I turned the radio on and found some okay music and drove up 19th and through the park and through the Avenues a little and over to Arguello, and then the music changed so I looked for another station and hit a news one – and then I found myself repeatedly shouting a bad word as loudly as I could possibly shout it, and kind of thrashing back and forth in rage. It took me awhile to calm down, and all I calmed down into was despair and only slightly quieter rage. I was upset, and I went on being upset all afternoon.

Because…well, perfect. Great. There’s a glimmer of hope that Pakistan might get to be able to have a secular democracy after all, and thus be an example to other majority Muslim countries; and one with a woman at the head of it besides, and thus even more of an example; well of course we can’t have that, so Bang. And I admired Bhutto, while being unsure how justified the corruption charges were or were not. And – you know how it is – I hate it when women who get some power, whether political or intellectual, are killed because they got some power. I hate it. It makes me feel threatened and furious. I hate being reminded that people can prevent each other from doing things any time they feel like it, just by finding a gun or a bomb, and that lots of people do feel like it. It’s the truth, it’s reality, and it stinks.

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11 Responses to “Bad, bad, very bad”

Sorry about Bhutto’s death. Things don’t look good for Pakistan. Atomic weapons, a corrupt military dictatorship which did not protect Bhutto (she should have had security like Bush has)accidentally on purpose, Al Qaeda, Talebans and assorted other radical groups tolerated or encouraged by the government, poverty, ignorance, an internal political situation in which no one knows who is whose enemy, in which religious fanaticism and the hunger for power are so mixed that one cannot separate them, an economy which is being left behind by its so-called rival, India. Not a place I plan to visit in the near future.

Incontrovertibly! It is such gloomy news to hear this Xmas Time. When I first [on Yahoo News] caught a glimpse of it yesterday, I instantly thought my eyes were deceiving me. I just could not fathom what I was seeing before my eyes. I thought there must be some error. I hurriedly switched [with the mouse] to another site. Not wanting to linger on However, inevitably it had to be faced. Gosh, it is such devastating news to hear. What are the people who do this kind of thing really all about? What makes them think that they can with the drop of a hat just go around wiping out human beings from the face of the earth? Are they under the illusion from their religious overseers that they will become martyrs for their dastardly cowardly acts? Or what!

“There are other aspects, but I think they might more profitably be discussed later, when/if things start to calm down a little?”

Probably right, but for me the rawness of the first shock is the best time to try to comprehend what it is about such grotesque violence that is completely repugnant to me and why I consider it so important to resist.

I heard the news on the car radio just as I was returning home from a week long break and felt no shock, no surprise and… no great regret. Sorry to be so callous but she had had two opportunities to rule the country and screwed up on a fantastic scale each time and this time would have been no different. She was completely self-serving and did nothing for her country or her countrywomen. She wasn’t much of a leader, her double x chromosomes notwithstanding.

I completely abhor political violence and am sorry for her gory demise, no one deserves that, not even one who is rumoured to have bumped off her own brother and political rival. With or without Bhutto, Pakistan is a basket case and it will undoubtedly get worse.

Although nothing could posibly justify this poor womans brutal murder I have to agree for the most part with mirax,s comment, she realy did very little when given the opportunity to govern Pakistan other than line her own pockets and those of her family!

So…if we think Benazir Bhutto did not do such a great job as PM then that judgement in some way makes her death maybe not such a tragedy?

Is any consideration of her personal conduct or political activities, no matter how well intentioned or heavily qualified, germane to the question of whether it is, or is not, ok to blow up 200 fathers, mothers, children mostly innocent bystanders? My opinion is that it is not.

These are separate issues and failure to distinguish between the two is not a sensible option.

‘then that judgement in some way makes her death maybe not such a tragedy?’

Not at all tapdog. I would simply say that it was not a tragedy any greater than that of the 20 people who lost their lives with her on thursday or the other 200 that were blown skyhigh during her reckless homecoming parade. What an utterly selfish and vain act that was! The parade in the armoured vehicle, knowingly drawing thousands to danger. I condemn the murders of all, just do not feel much personally for Ms Bhutto.

But was it utterly selfish and vain, mirax? If it’s true that (as we are told) that is the way campaigning is done in Pakistan – that she couldn’t campaign without that kind of public exposure – then was it really selfish and vain or was it a (frankly very brave) taking the necessary risk to campaign for a properly open, public, democratic, accountable campaign for office? Especially when the other choice is all too available in Pakistan? Apparently it’s either the military simply grabbing, or it’s political people openly campaigning at great risk to themselves and to the people who come to see them. But I really think it’s unfair to blame the candidates for the risk to the public – they have to be able to campaign, and if there is risk, it’s surely the murderers who deprive everyone of the right to choose candidates who are to blame, not the political figures who take the risk.

And as for the tragedy…the personal tragedy is no greater for Bhutto than it is for the others killed by her enemies, but the institutional tragedy is. It’s not just Bhutto who was destroyed, it was also the ability of Pakistan to have a normal process of electing a candidate rather than having one imposed on them at gunpoint. That is a huge, huge tragedy as well as a huge danger for the world (because of the currently-unique combination of nukes and Islamists).

Even if Bhutto didn’t do a good job in the past, electing her would surely have been a much better outcome than the ones that are available now. The problems here are institutional more than personal. Bhutto would have been 1) elected 2) secular 3) modernizing 4) an opponent of the Islamists 5) liberal 6) a woman at the head of an Islamizing country.

I read in the paper that Pakistan’s troops were told to “shoot protesters on sight” after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as her body was being buried next to her father in her family village. “A procession of thousands of her supporters in Nau Dero signified the beginning of her funeral as she was laid to rest in the village of Garhi Khuda Baksh.” She is not even cold in the grave and look what is in Pakistan already happening. Not that it is anything new “in the most dangerous country in the world” She will undoubtedly be blamed by certain Pakistani factions ‘beyond the grave’ for this scenario.

They’re all important. Elected is very important; so is secular; so is an opponent of the Islamists. Her being a woman is not the only thing that matters – in fact that’s absurd: consider: what if she’d been an Islamizing theocrat who took power in a coup? (Yes I know a woman couldn’t do that, but that doesn’t alter the basic point.) A woman Islamist theocratic dictator would hardly be preferable to a male secular elected anti-Islamist.